The magic of parking assist

IN THE past few years I have often had demonstrations
of

‘parking assist’ in new cars.

I was never really confident that it worked properly
and indeed I had seen it fail a few times. But no such problems last week with
the Chrysler Ypsilon.

Chrysler’s ever efficient PR man Conor Twomey gave me
a demo in their new Ypsilon and it worked perfectly. It’s amazing to see the
steering wheel

‘lock hard’ on its own. You control the clutch and accelerator
but the

‘park magic’ does the steering for you. My daughter, who admits to
having difficulty with parallel parking, loved it and wished she had the
facility in her Nissan Micra.

This is the second Chrysler I have driven in 2012.
Having already been impressed with the spacious Delta, this time round it was
the quirky-named Ypsilon supermini. Once again it’s the same situation as with
the Delta, this is a Lancia car with a Chrysler badge.

At first glance you would think that this is a
two-door car as the back handles are hidden. I sometimes like the idea of
hiding the back door handles, but in this instance I think using back door
handles would have made the car look bigger, but then I’m not a car designer.

It looks like Chrysler is aiming this as a four-door
city car. A colleague remarked that the impressive grille at the front reminded
him of the old PT Cruiser. I thought the front and indeed the rear lights were
attractive.

Everything is black inside, but a glass roof really
brightens up the interior. You will have to be impressed with the massive array
of dials on the double-decker dash. The main controls are situated bang in the
middle of the dash within easy reach, but if you are short sighted you could
have difficulty reading the revs and speedometer dials which are further away
and on a higher level. The speedometer is probably easier to read for the front
seat passenger than the driver. One of my passengers commented that they would
be very careful if they were doing a driving test in the Ypsilon as the
speedometer would be right in front of the tester and you would really have to
watch your speed.

Leg room is tight and there is just about room for two
adults in the back seat. The boot is a reasonable size, but no spare wheel,
just a repair kit. Fuel consumption is low thanks to the stop-start technology.

Prices start at

?¬14,245 for the 1.2 petrol version;
there is also a 1.3 diesel version but of course journalists are spoiled and I
drove the top of the range two-tone Limited edition petrol version with lots of
extras and that one will cost you

?¬18,745. It’s going to be difficult for
Chrysler to get new Irish customers in what is a very competitive sector, but
this value for money car is well worth a test drive.